


Paradise Regained

by Songspinner



Series: DMC Gen Week [2]
Category: DmC: Devil May Cry
Genre: DMC Gen Week, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 11:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20025409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Songspinner/pseuds/Songspinner
Summary: 15-year-old Vergil finally finds out who he really is--and that he has a twin brother out there somewhere. Features a flashback to his childhood with Dante. (Sparda doesn't show up, but it goes a little into Vergil's remembered impressions of him, so I counted it as a relationship.)Part of DMC Gen Week on tumblrDay 2 Prompt: Hug/Competition





	Paradise Regained

Autumn leaves skittered past his feet like tumbleweeds and the jacket of his school uniform didn’t do much to keep out the chill of October’s relentless wind. The cold couldn’t stop him, though, not today. He’d been distracted all day, barely able to focus on classes over the anticipation buzzing in his mind. He felt wired, wide awake but far away. The nagging feeling that he’d forgotten the most important thing he’d ever known had plagued him for eight years, ever since he woke up to parents who solemnly told him he’d been in an accident and suffered near-total amnesia. _“Vergil? You don’t remember us, do you? It’s all right. We’re just grateful you survived.”_ He _knew_ there was more to it, though he couldn’t have articulated what made him so certain. He just…knew.

Fortunately, his parents rarely cared what he did after school as long as he got his homework done and remembered to eat something. So today was the day he’d learn the truth. An invisible string—maybe it was destiny, he thought—yanked him through the gate and down the street with an alacrity that was a far cry from his usual measured pace. Someone called his name as he passed, but he pretended not to hear them. The bullies left him alone now, after he’d finally lost his temper and nearly crushed their leader’s windpipe against a locker (no one believed the story afterward—_"you mean creepy Vergil, the one who carries his laptop everywhere to avoid talking to people? you’re kidding, right?”_) but that didn’t really fill him with confidence in his classmates’ goodwill. Someone always wanted what he had, wanted to show him they were better, wanted to put him in his place.

Maybe after today he’d know what his place was supposed to be.

It had taken over a year of dogged (mostly illegal) research, false leads, and sketchy late-night meetings that took him through all the bad parts of town, but he’d finally tracked down an address. He wasn’t even sure exactly what it meant. He just knew that once he dug deeply enough, there was no record of a boy named Vergil—or any child at all—being born to Mr. and Mrs. Sheffield, and the only clue he could find to his real heritage was an abandoned, condemned building on the outskirts of Limbo City.

Rounding a corner, he saw it: a long driveway leading through a tall, wrought-iron gate. Atop the gate, the word “PARADISE” beckoned. He scoffed, a brief chuckle of disbelief, but he couldn’t completely disdain it. It was too familiar, somehow.

He all but ran the last few yards before grasping the padlock holding the gate closed and yanking hard, smiling in satisfaction as it came apart in his hand. No one had ever been able to explain to him why he was so much stronger and faster than other boys his age, and after a few…incidents, he stopped demonstrating it in front of people. He hoped his parents would just forget, or assume it had gone away somehow. They never mentioned it again, anyway, and he gladly kept that particular silence.

He pushed the gate open and surveyed the estate with questing eyes. It was larger than where he lived now and surely used to be almost palatial in its grandeur. Now, it looked like a tornado had ripped through it while a fire raged across the ruined gardens and grounds. _What the hell happened here?_

The front door wasn’t locked. He opened it into a long corridor, letting the crisp wind in to blow dust up in little clouds at his feet. He paused when he reached the grand hall, with its sweeping double staircase and massive crystal chandelier. _Well,_ he thought, _if this really is where I used to live, my real family is absolutely loaded._

But where _were_ they? What happened to them?

He pulled the little blue amulet that hung around his neck out from under his shirt and ran his fingers over it thoughtfully. His parents(?) claimed it had been a birthday gift from them years ago, but that never felt right. Looking at it made him feel alone. Lonely, even. But he wore it all the time, hoping it would one day remind him of whatever he’d forgotten that was so crucial.

The longer he walked through the mansion’s halls, hushed as death, the more he remembered it, like a hazy dream. He knew that through _this_ door he’d find the kitchen, and he knew before he saw it that it would be almost drab by comparison to the rest of this place. _Servants did the cooking._ He almost thought he could hear their muted chatter for a moment, see their looks of faux disapproval as the two boys swiped cookies and ran off, giggling. _“My cookie’s bigger!” “No it isn’t, mine is!” “Well, mine has more chocolate chips!”_

Wait…_two_ boys?

He had to see more. Some of the stairs were broken, but he made his way up to the second floor and followed his instincts to a tall, elegant room lined with bookshelves. The décor throughout the mansion was odd in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Macabre, maybe. It felt right, though, and this room gave him a gut-hollowing feeling of awe that threatened to drown him in its wave of nostalgia. A portrait hung in the center of one wall. The man in the painting looked like some kind of knight, with sword and shield; but his face was obscured, obliterated in an obviously deliberate attack on its canvas. Vergil felt like the knight was staring down at him from an impossibly huge height, one he could never hope to reach. The nameplate underneath said “Sparda.”

He felt a warmth pulsing at his chest. …the amulet? He lifted it, and sure enough, it was warm to the touch—and glowing with a faint blue light. _This is it. Something’s about to happen. I’ve never been more ready._

***

_“Giving up, Vergil?”_

_“N…no!” It wasn’t fair, he thought, forcing himself to keep going even though his arm ached, and Dante was clearly winning. Dante _always_ won. Dante was stronger and he could practice for longer without getting tired. They were twins, they were supposed to be the same! He’d have to keep practicing until he was just as strong and tough._

_“Okay, but I’m not going easy on you!” Dante laughed and Vergil was forced to back away from his brother’s endless advance. They crisscrossed the room, still clashing madly with their wooden swords. Vergil didn’t want to lose again. He wanted to prove to Father he was as good with swords as Dante was. Maybe he’d give the twins real swords, then._

_“Ha!” Dante brought his weapon down with both hands. Vergil tried to parry it, but his strength gave out and Dante’s sword thumped him hard in the chest. He fell, eyes widening as the impact with the floor knocked the wind out of him._

_“I win again!” Dante shouted, but he paused when he saw Vergil gasping for breath instead of getting up. “Hey, are you okay?”_

_Vergil felt warm tears start to well up in his eyes. He desperately tried to blink them back. He couldn’t cry in front of Dante! His brother reached down to help him up, but once on his feet he wobbled, hunched over trying to get his lungs working right again._

_“Whoa…” Dante stared with a stupid, owlish look on his face. Vergil might have laughed if he could breathe without wheezing. But after a moment, the dark-haired boy dropped his wooden sword and came over to put an arm around his twin’s shoulders, helping him onto the bed and sitting with him. Vergil couldn’t help it, then; a rogue tear escaped, sliding down his face like a traitor._

_“Don’t worry, Vergil, you’re gonna be fine.” Dante said, wrapping his arms around his brother the way their mother always did when they were hurt or upset, patting him awkwardly on the back before letting go. As Vergil’s breathing evened out, he added, “I guess I’m so good at swords it took your breath away!”_

_Vergil almost choked again as he suddenly burst into giggles, hastily wiping his face. “Nuh uh,” he said, “next time I’ll win.”_

_“Bet you a cookie you’re wrong.”_

_“You don’t even have a cookie.” Vergil slid down from the bed. “Race you to the kitchen!” He took off before Dante even had a chance to say anything, leaving his brother to shout “Hey!” and scramble to catch up._

***

Vergil gasped, feeling a strange pressure at his back as the memory faded, along with a clear but fleeting impression of a place with a green sky and a red tree, an impossibly warped cityscape. He struggled to quickly drop his backpack, and as it fell, a flash of white-blue light surrounded him. It was gone in a blink, but in its place, he found he was holding a long, slim katana sheathed in a plain black scabbard.

_Dante…I have a twin brother. I remember him. And this…_

With an air of reverence, he held the sheath in his left hand and slowly pulled the blade out with his right. It gleamed in the fading autumn light. He thought he could hear a voice whisper its name: “Yamato.” And, “This sword is yours, Vergil. It’s a part of you now.”

He slashed experimentally, feeling more than hearing a sonorous hum as the blade seemed to cut right through the air itself, sharper than the sharpest razor. He glanced around the room at bookshelf upon bookshelf of old-fashioned volumes with crumbling leather spines. The rest of the answers were here, he was sure of it. He’d have to explore the house, try to remember more…but first, he wanted to know about Sparda. _My_ _father,_ he mentally corrected himself. His real father. And a brother he’d lost, and a mother he couldn’t quite recall. His eyes roamed the shelves eagerly as he began his self-education in demonology and the legend of the nephilim.

Hours later, when the sun had set and he was reduced to reading by the light of his cell phone, his stomach reminded him with a surly grumble that he hadn’t eaten dinner and his parents…no, the Sheffields…were probably wondering where he was. He’d have to come back tomorrow. He carefully stashed the sword—_Yamato_—and a few books in his backpack, feeling like the whole world had opened up to him all at once in a rush of fresh air and possibilities.

Later, he’d remember the coppery stench of blood and the sound of Sparda calling his sons’ names in a desperate hiss; the hellish snarling of demons sniffing for Vergil up and down the house as he cowered in a closet holding his breath. He’d return to the lost city in his soul’s dreams and slay monsters until he felt power bubbling up from within him like a geyser. He’d teach himself how to find and open rifts into Limbo, and explore the demonic realm with a curiosity bordering on obsession. He’d endure nightmares he couldn’t explain to his foster family even when he woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, and eventually, he’d leave that house without a word and never go back.

But for now, all he could think about was returning to Paradise, and about how one day, he’d bring his twin brother there, too.


End file.
